How to get opportunities by personal branding

Kunal : "Share things you learn/ know. Do your personal branding on twitter"

Chats : "What do I share if I don't know anything"

Kunal : "Then learn and share"

Personal branding is not about faking it, it's about showing the world what you are, and once you are something, it is not boasting because it is true.

The most important of all of it is, you have to work hard and learn things. It is about how much value you create, and for creating something, you need knowledge.

If you are not ready to put efforts in learning and exploring, this entire blog is pointless. The only pre-requisite for personal branding is, being ready to always learn and work hard for it. There is no magic spell, if you are searching for it.

Personal branding, what is it? and why is it important?

What is personal Branding:

  • It's a way of letting your profile (twitter/ GitHub/ showwcase/ LinkedIn etc) speak for you.
  • You show the work you do, the things you learn or have learnt, on your profile.
  • It shows that you are not just a consumer but also a creator.
  • People need to know you are there and you can do amazing stuff.

Why is it necessary ?

  • The formula is simple, 'opportunities' need 'reach' and reach = work you have done in the past as well as doing in the present.

  • It is true that sometimes, a person who is not a better coder/ developer than you, will get selected instead of you, just because they have a better online presence than you. It happens so many times.

  • Things like First impressions, visible achievements, open source projects, reputation, etc. they matter a lot.

  • Learning and doing good things is still prominent, but to get to the place where you want to be, personal branding is necessary.

Important questions to ask yourself

  • What do you want to be seen as ?(Expert in something ?, good colleague ?)
  • Who are your role models ?
  • What do you want your job to be ?
  • Who do you want to respect you ?
  • If you were a recruiter, whom would you recruit ?

These questions are very necessary when you want to decide what to post?, whom to follow? etc.

What are the goals ?

Build an audience:

people who follow you on twitter are actually interested in the things you provide. things like guidance, ideas, how you tackled with a problem, how you learned something etc. your audience want to know your thoughts!

Create value for the communities:

There is an article/ blog/ video for everything on the internet, but nothing is perfect. See what is missing, what you can add. that is how you create value. Communities need people who add something new!

Join the communities:

This cannot be stressed enough. You want your questions answered for something ? ask the ones who created/ managing it. They are present in the communities, join the slack channels, mailing lists, discord servers etc. Get your questions answered !

Open Source:

Well, a blog will be too short for it. All I have to say is, "JUST DO IT !" and if you want to know why?. Eddie will walk you through it.

Build the network:

  • conferences
  • twitter/ LinkedIn/ showwcase
  • make friends in community
  • Talks are very important, does not matter how many people listen, just start taking seminars, college is a good place to begin.

Now, since the goals are clear, we can begin with "How?"

How to get started (twitter)

Your bio and profile

  • Write about what you know (tech stack, concepts etc)
  • What you are interested in (WebD, Blockchain, DevOps etc)
  • maybe add punchline (a quote ?)
  • pin a tweet, since it is the first tweet anyone sees when they visit your profile.

Hashtags

  • Try to avoid hashtags, they limit your reach.
  • In case you use it, just don't put more than one hashtag in any case.
  • you can also use a hashtag when there is no specific twitter account to tag, like #DSAwithKunal.

What to share and what not to

  • Start with tech content only.
  • Later, mix your personality with it.
  • no point of sharing irrelevant stuff, because people are not yet interested in knowing what you have to say.
  • When you get around 200-300 followers, you can mix your personality with it.
  • Human side in tech is also important, don't be a retweeting bot.

who to follow

  • There is a lot of clickbait on twitter.
  • Before following someone:
    • visit their profile.
    • check if their tweets are relevant to you ? are they helping you ?
    • Do they speak publicly ? or just advertising themselves ?
    • Some great people can be found in every domain, some in cloud and open source are kelsey, saiyam, Eddie, Kunal and many more, EXPLORE !
    • follow people, retweeted by the ones you follow.

how to begin

  • Reply tweets, just try to genuinely help people and solve their problems. Share links, blogs, others.
  • Thread (1 every week) about things you learned, what you came to know in any event, course etc.
  • Share your tips.
  • Learn and write about it.

How to interact with people

  • Don't spam mentions, or get blocked. If you spam mentions, you will eventually be muted and you will not look good to the people you are mentioning.
  • In case you attend an event, mention the speakers and products.
  • Retweets are a great way to grow and create value.
  • when sharing something about you learned someone, tag them by saying "I learnt this from this person".
  • Obviously, don't spread hate and have a proper sense of justice.
  • have your opinions, because individual opinions matter, but have proof to back things up.

Content

  • create short content and a weekly thread.
  • 4-5 tweets per day are the "medium" stage, you can go up or down.
  • share your own experiences, how you solved a problem, what you learned, how you learned. create something others can gain from, only sharing "I learnt this" is not great, "I learnt this like this, here are some tips", this is how you create value.

that's enough to get you up and running. These are not "carved on stone" rules, you can change things while you get better understanding of things but, somethings mentioned above are really very essential.

When to start ?

Right now ! what are you waiting for ?

Wrapping up:

  • As mentioned above, all these steps don't matter at all if you don't work hard for learning things. If you don't learn what will you share ? and why are you even doing it if you don't enjoy learning.